Bob Cooney

And the mystery surrounding Andrew Bynum and his knees continues.

Bynum met with the media a couple of minutes ago and said:

"I had a little bit of a setback. Just working through some issues with the right knee I kind of have a mirror thing going on with the left knee. I don't know what's going on. The doctors are saying it's a weakened cartilage state so we kind of wait, I guess. We can't do anything. I just have to wait for the cartilage to get strong."

"It's the same exact spot (as the right knee) with the cartilage. Just doing routine things and it started swelling up. No blunt force injury or anything like that. It's the same timetable still."

The team announced earlier this week that Bynum would hopefully be back on the court around December 10 and then have up to a month to get himself in shape and then return to the club. Whether this latest setback hinders that, Bynum would not say that, more because it seemed he just doesn't know. He will continue with swimming and other low impact excersizing.

"Both knees are swelling, but we've got it under control. (The pain is ok when doing) every day activities. The more I do the higher it is. Actually this is a weird issue. I've never had any cartilage issues. I had a meniscus thing but that's fine, we don't know what's going on. It's just from running and playing basketball (for years). I didn't twinst my knee or anything like that."

(UPDATE 6:56 P.M.:) From Tony DiLeo:

From our point of view it’s a situation where we have to continue to be patient. We want to be cautious. We’re looking long term not short term and big picture. We’re going to do what is best for Andrew and best for the organization and try to get him as healthy as he can be and try to get him back on the court when he is ready.

His body will be the indicator, when he’s feeling good, when that pain subsides from his knees when he can step up in his rehab and do more strenuous activities, that will be the indicator. A date is very difficult, as you know. We just want to get him healthy and get him out there when he’s ready. We think we have a good team now and when he’s ready to get out there we’ll have a better team. In the end we want to see our complete team with Andrew out there.

Plain and simple we’re trying to rehab his knees so they’re healthy and he can get out there and play like he did last season. That’s our goal. When he’s ready, and it’s hard to predict when he’ll be ready, hopefully sooner than later. Main concern is Andrew’s health. Main concern is big picture. We want to have a long relationship with him.

I think it’s the same time table because both knees have to heal. That’s what we’re going with. When the pain subsides, when he can do more strenuous activities, when we can get him out on the court to basketball activities we’ll know a lot more.

He’ll be reevaluated in mid-December, he’ll have another MRI and we’ll see what the progress is. The players have to be confident that they can play. You cannot ask a player to play injured. Whenever he feels confident that he can get out there and he’s healthy and he can help the team, we both want the same goal. We don’t want a player going out there injured and maybe creating more injury or more damage. This is a situation when he feels confident, when the doctors feel confident that everything’s OK, that’s when he’ll be back on the court.

He saw his doctor a couple of days ago. He had an MRI on his left knee.